savvisdirect

With cloud computing, many companies believe that they no longer need their IT department. Nothing could be further from the truth. Just because IT no longer does all the maintenance and upgrades doesn’t mean that IT doesn’t still need to be involved. In fact, your end-users don’t care if the CSP is in charge of the infrastructure and software. They’re still going to IT if there’s an issue.

A recent article by Patrick Carey for NetworkWorld outlines six very interesting myths surrounding cloud computing – myths that could cause major issues to your cloud computing efforts.

One myth that the article brings up is that you don’t need your own monitoring tools. This couldn’t be further from the truth. Sure, CSPs do have monitoring dashboards and reports, but they’re pretty generic. You’re not going to get all the information that you need, especially in regards to end-to-end service.

The most important myth covered in article is the following:

“I don’t need to monitor. I have a guaranteed SLA from the provider.” Your SaaS service provider is likely able to run their data centers with higher availability than most IT organizations, but they are not 100%. Service level guarantees are great, but if you aren’t monitoring your SaaS service, how do you know your SLA is actually being met? In addition, service level guarantees only cover outages the provider can control, i.e. their own networks, servers and applications, not any of your infrastructure and not the Internet service providers that connect you. You’re on your own to monitor and manage those.

You must always monitor your CSP, their apps/infrastructure and their service. Your IT department may not be handling day-to-day activities, but you still need a cloud IT support staff to verify that everything is working properly.

Plus, your IT staff can interpret the problems that your end-users are having so that the CSP really understands the problem. For example, if your employee says that an email “just isn’t sending”, your Hosted Exchange provider probably needs more information. An IT admin can get to the root of the problem by asking what the error message is, does it just time out, etc. This way, you’re not wasting valuable CSP support hours just trying to diagnose the problem.

Security used to be a major concern amongst businesses considering using cloud computing. But as the term “cloud” has become pervasive in the market, companies have become less concerned about the implications of outsourcing data and processes to a third-party data center.

While this is great news for cloud service providers (CSP), businesses may be putting themselves at risk. They’re not thinking about the fact that their sensitive data and processes are stored on “someone else’s computer”. A recent article by Danny Palmer on Computing quoted computer security expert Graham Cluley, who thinks that focusing on the word “cloud” has lulled businesses into a false security.

"You need to encrypt your data. Nobody used to use the word cloud - we all used to say "internet" but now it's trendy to say cloud," Cluley told Computing. "I'd like to suggest a new phrase so that every time we say cloud we say 'somebody else's computer'."

If you consider that your data is stored on a third-party computer as opposed to the “cloud”, you’re more apt to think about how your data is handled.

How to Secure Your Data

Just because your data is in the hands of a third-party CSP doesn’t mean that it’s not protected. Most CSPs have protections in place to prevent or reduce data breaches. You do, however, need to take your own precautions before signing on with a CSP.

· What security precautions are in place to protect your data: Your data should be protected at every step of the process: upload, download and storage. If you are uploading/downloading data, verify that your CSP has an encrypted connection. Ensure that the storage solution is encrypted, and learn who has access to your data.

· Are security permissions in place: You should be able to control permissions to data and only provide full administrative access to a handful of employees, i.e. your IT Administrator. You don’t need every employee to see all files/personal details.

· What guarantees are in place: Check the CSP’s Service Level Agreements (SLAs) to determine their security guarantees. Also, do your homework. Does this company have a good reputation? Have they had security breaches in the past (not uncommon amongst CSPs)? If so, what did they do to remedy the situation?

· What on-site securities do you have in place: We often forget that we can protect ourselves from being hacked. Your password should be at least seven characters long. It’s been proven that the longer the password is, the less likely it is to get hacked. Also, change your password about every three months. Never write down your passwords where others can see them. You should use a secure password saver if you can’t remember them. Never give your password to others. If you do, immediately change it.

Are you worried about security in the “cloud”? What precautions have you taken?

David Linthicum is known for having strong opinions, and he’s one of the most-respected writers in the cloud computing space. So when he says that a particular product isn’t getting its just desserts, the industry tends to listen. David Linthicum is known for having strong opinions, and he’s one of the most-respected writers in the cloud computing space. So when he says that a particular product isn’t getting its just desserts, the industry tends to listen.

In a recent blog post, he pointed out that IaaS and PaaS get all the attention within the cloud space and that SaaS is treated no better than Cinderella by her step sisters. But it’s SaaS that’s driving the market. The industry professionals just fall under the spell of the new releases within IaaS and PaaS.

According to the post, “SaaS will continue to dominate most public cloud computing sales. However, it's shifted from 69 to 58 percent of the market, as reported by Capgemini TME Strategy Lab. At the same time, the total market has increased from $17.4 billion in 2009 to $44.2 billion this year.

The decrease in market share is due to the growing use of both IaaS and PaaS. However, SaaS remains the largest portion of the cloud computing market, even if it doesn't inspire much chatter.”

But why is SaaS the predominant player in this market? Well, much of it as to do with mobility and bring-your-own-device (BYOD) trends.

According to an article by Marissa Tejada on Midsize Insider, she says that small and mid-size companies are using BYOD as a way to increase productivity. Many people are no longer tied to a desk or even work within an office, but they still need to access their files and applications.

The article goes on to say the following:

“The report, ‘SMB Mobile Software-as-a-Service Forecast 2011–2017,’ was recently featured in an article in Mobility TechZone and revealed that the mobile SaaS market is set to jump from $6.7 billion in 2012 to $19.7 billion by 2017. That is an estimated compound annual growth rate of 24 percent over a five-year time period. According to the findings, midsize firms want to create more mobile applications for business tools such as customer relationship management, human resources, business intelligence (BI) and email and for apps specific to their respective industries.”

What do you think of this trend? Do you use more SaaS than IaaS and PaaS?

Forrester made some pretty lofty predictions at the beginning of the year about cloud computing changes to the market. In a recent article by James Staten of Forrester Research (Forrester’s 2013 Cloud Predictions: A Look Back on ZDNet), he grades how well they did. Some predictions were dead-on; others missed the mark a bit.

We especially liked the following predictions, and agree with the author that they were very on the mark:

Cloud and mobile will become one. Grade: A. As predicted, the dominant model for mobile applications was a backing in the cloud. Commercial mobile-back-ends-as-a-service are helping mobile applications elastically respond to mobile client engagements and shielding corporate data center applications from mobile traffic explosions. But we’d have to give a C to enterprises here who have been slow to embrace this synergy. We still see too many enterprises bypassing the MBaaS and trying to connect the mobile app to their web tier or right back to the back office. This burdens mobile applications unnecessarily and inhibits their agility while potentially pounding the backend as mobile becomes the primary system of engagement. (This has been happening for a while, but the BYOD trend is definitely accelerating the use of mobile devices.)

We’ll get real about using the cloud for backup and disaster recovery. Grade: B-. According to our 2013 Forrsights Hardware survey, DRaaS adoption is up to 23% already implemented, and DIY DR in the cloud is at 21% implemented. And we saw a strong rise in DR piloting, activities that are likely to become implementations in the coming year. We hope to see this jump in 2014, because our surveys also tell us BCDR is a key reason companies are moving to cloud — so where are all the success stories? BCDR analyst Rachel Dines: “They are coming — slowly — because DR is something people invest in in waves. Also, some may never be open to discussing it publicly because they see DR as a competitive differentiator.” (BC/DR is something that every business must embrace. If not, you risk more than just losing your data. You might lose your entire business.)

What do you think of Forrester’s predictions? What do you think will be the major trends next year?

CenturyLink has acquired cloud leader Tier 3, a move that has created a lot of buzz in the industry. Jared Wray, Founder and Chief Technology Officer of Tier 3 and now serves as Chief Technology Officer for CenturyLink Cloud and leads the CenturyLink Cloud Development Center for the company's Savvis organization, recently posted a personal message on the Savvis blog. savvisdirect reprints the message below.

Tier 3 has joined CenturyLink. We are going to build amazing things together.

But let's look back before we look ahead.

Many people contributed to the success of Tier 3. Developers launched feature after feature, while network engineers supported customers day and night. A passion for problem solving fueled their achievements.

I'd like to thank these talented individuals. This is the team that built APIs, designed the UX, rolled out new self-service functions and helped our customers grow. We've worked with lots of great partners too. Together, we advanced cloud computing.

Cloud is really, really hard. Just read the headlines - enterprises and traditional IT vendors are struggling.

We started Tier 3 to make cloud easier. We created products, processes and a culture to help enable cloud for the enterprise.

And cloud is a littler easier now, thanks to Tier 3's ecosystem of people and partners.

This deal would not be possible without Tier 3's customers. Their support, their decision to trust a smaller company for their cloud needs and their feedback on how we could improve our service all played a part in this coming together.

Very little will change for our customers. Here are 3 things our customers should understand:

1. There are minimal changes to the cloud services you use today. Our compute, storage and networking services are unchanged. If you have customized the portal interface, this color scheme will persist. If you have the default Tier 3 theme, you'll see an updated experience with the CenturyLink logo and color palette.

2. No change to SLAs. Our commitment to uptime and availability remains high, as it always has.

3. No change to the people and processes you have come to depend on. We plan to retain our team of network engineers, developers and support team as we transition to a new phase of growth.

One thing will be changing, however: We will have more resources to accelerate cloud innovation and adoption.

That's a good thing because there's more work to be done. The industry needs to abstract more complexity away from users. CenturyLink is committed to building an amazing platform that does just that.

Early next year, we'll open the new CenturyLink Cloud Development Center in the greater Seattle area. This facility will foster an innovative environment where the best and brightest come together to move the industry forward.

We know this collaborative approach is the right one because of our history at Tier 3. Our team pioneered new technologies, embraced open source with Iron Foundry and other projects and established a unique "build for cloud scale" development culture.

This commitment to open source and "cloud scale" culture are the defining parts of Tier 3 for me. And both components are central to our future as a part of CenturyLink.

The new CenturyLink Cloud team will apply these philosophies to solve a wide range of challenges - both external, for customers, and internal, for employees and partners.

What challenges?

We want to make cloud dramatically easier for everyone. Not just for IT or developers that "get cloud." But for technical staff unfamiliar or wary of cloud and for business users.

We'll solve this with five ideas in mind:

The enterprise cloud market is evolving to be more than infrastructure. The cost of infrastructure will continue to drop. However, the human cost remains - transforming this dimension is where the industry needs to focus. That means self-service cloud products combined with managed services, global data center footprints, high-performance networks and fiber.

Platforms of the future need to do more than resource aggregation. Self-service infrastructure that's elastic and cheap is the first wave of cloud. But the next wave goes far beyond that. We are nearing the tipping point, with market adoption of projects like Cloud Foundry. Will the majority of cloud users even interact with servers in the future? I don't think they will.

Startup Agility + Corporate Backing = Rapid roadmap acceleration. At first, I was a little skeptical when talking to CenturyLink. What would they know about self-service cloud? How could they attract highly skilled engineers? After going through this process, though, I will say CenturyLink gets it. They love the Cloud Development Center idea and are looking for this new team to help lead their business into the future. That means more resources to drive their cloud business forward with new products and services.

Any workload, any time, anywhere. Platforms that control and manipulate virtual resources should be able to optimize workloads wherever they are. Not just on CenturyLink Cloud infrastructure, but on other systems as well. We'll continue to build flexibility and adaptability into our software so we can support other ecosystems like OpenStack.

Open Source FTW. We deeply believe in open source. We depend on open source code to run our global cloud, and we contribute back with projects like Iron Foundry. Open source will continue to have an instrumental role in IT, and we want to be a part of it.

The journey has been incredible so far, but we're just getting started.

We’re all used to the traditional way of deploying and using Microsoft Office: You pay a licensing fee per user. You locally install Office on your on-premises infrastructure. You handle all the maintenance and upgrades.

That could all change with Office 365, which Microsoft released last year. Office 365 follows the same path as the Adobe Creative Cloud. You virtually “rent” as opposed to “buy” the Office suite of products, including Word, PowerPoint, Excel and the like.

Microsoft did release Office 2013, but it seems as if the company was backing a single horse in this race between its two products. Office 2013 is significantly more expensive than Office 365. Office 2013 costs between $140 (Home/Student Edition) to $400 for Office Pro. Office 365, however, costs approximately $100 per year for Office 365 Home Premium or $150 for Small Business Premium.

There’s, however, more to those figures than initially meets the eye. The Office 2013 purchase only covers a single license, and you get 5GB of SkyDrive online storage (great for backups or storing large items like photos and videos). With Office 365, you get 20GB of SkyDrive storage and up to 60 minutes per month worth of free internal Skype Calls. The Office 365 Small Business Premium version comes with up to 5 licenses for the $150 fee. For an organization with multiple employees and workstations, the cost savings are impressive.

Another feature of the Office 365 Small Business Premium service is that it comes with Microsoft Back Office, which includes Microsoft Exchange, Lync and SharePoint. Many offices have come to rely on internal collaboration and communication, so including apps like SharePoint and Lync can help with business productivity.

The only downside of this cloud app is that it’s only supported on Windows PCs. At this juncture, you can’t use the apps on mobile devices or computers running Apple iOS, Linux or Google-based operating systems.

What do you think of Office 365? Do you think that you would use it for your organization?

Aberdeen Group recently performed research on how cloud computing affects their company. The company has over 70 percent of their apps virtualized on the cloud. They indicated that since they started using cloud computing, their average downtime per event is 0.7 hours, and they reduced IT spend for server and app deployment by 21 percent. This is a pretty significant endorsement of cloud computing. ThinkGig recently released an infographic as to why you must choose cloud computing for your organization.

“IDC predicts that by the end of 2013, the 'digital universe' of all digital data created will reach four zettabytes - nearly 50 percent more than 2012 volumes and almost a quadrupling of 2010 volumes.”

These are pretty staggering statistics from a recent blog by Mike Bennett, Vice President, Global Data Center Acquisition and Expansion, for Savvis, a CenturyLink company. With all this data comes powerful data centers, and that means a lot of energy and rising carbon dioxide emissions. Data centers require a lot of power and cooling systems to keep them running.

“One of the best things digital society can do is move to streamlined, shared infrastructure that offers economies of scale for reducing overall energy consumption. Colocation and managed-hosting facilities can help businesses share the impact of necessary power and cooling, and cloud-computing technologies further increase server utilization and reduce energy consumption.”

Cloud service providers offer the IT industry a way to reduce carbon dioxide emissions and energy use.

Mindy Powers, VP of Business Sales for the Western Region for CenturyLink, recently wrote an article for the blog ThinkGig – “3 Tech Trends Retailers Can’t Afford to Ignore”. The article focuses on technology trends within the retail IT industry and how these trends could affect businesses.

Businesses need to pay attention to customer experience to ensure that customers can quickly make purchases and use promotions.

Social Media in Retail

People have used social media for years to research products before they buy. According to Powers, new technology will allow shopping centers to connect “retailers’ sales information and customer databases with the mall itself”. This would allow retailers to directly engage with customers.

Cloud Computing and Big Data

The final trend is probably the most interesting to our audience. Retailers can collect all sorts of customer data, including how they use social media, buying trends and reviews. If you can analyze this data, you can then create better promotions and campaigns for your customers than ever before.

The problem, however, is analyzing all this data. This is where, Power ascertains, cloud computing can be extremely effective. You can efficiently weed through data with cloud-based apps, including data analysis and CRM apps. But you can also store all of this data in a cloud storage system, ensuring that your data never outpaces your on-site storage.

Security is a deep and broad topic for computing. The primary focus of security is keeping prying eyes out and permitting only authorized personnel to perform approved actions. Saying this is simple, but making it happen is complex and involves a lot of people. The cavalier among you with “devil may care” attitudes - like me - might think “I’ve never had my identity stolen so why should I worry about someone snooping into my business”. That’s fine if you accept that such carefree approach to information security could result in the ruin of your business and the loss of employment for your employees. Even if the malicious intent of the intruder doesn’t ruin your system and steal your data, the impact on your business could be ruinous through disruptions that impact your customers’ impressions of you.

One of the more valuable developments in cloud computing for companies outside the Fortune 2000 is cloud-based security options. Some common examples include INstrusion detection/prevention (IDS/IDP), anti-virus/anti-spam (AV/AS), plus mobile device security options like remote wipe. Additionally, the data center environments on which we host our cloud solutions are often superior to those of companies’ much larger than yours. We’ve got the networks secured and monitored. Physical security includes badging in and OUT of the computer room with human supervision and the use of a ‘man trap’ that prevents fast escape. All personnel entering the computer room undergo background checks. For most of the SMB companies exploring cloud, these are the type of security aspects that are not found in your computing environments.

The Importance of SLAs, Site Security and Reputation Management

Not only are the data centers we use highly secure, we provide numerous options to make your business more secure, including the above mentioned intrusion, virus, “StoptheHacker”, and spam protection options. While information security is vital, there are a few aspects of protecting your business that are worth considering that don’t typically get lumped in with information security. These include SLAs, site security, and reputation management. While an SLA isn’t really a guarantee, our SLAs are backed by overly engineered, highly-redundant components, such as redundant power supplies, storage, and network components from the Internet to the local switches. These features that provide ‘business security’ are uncommon at most SMBs. These aspects are commonly lumped under business continuity and redundant architecture, which is true, but the value is the additional security they provide for your business. Our cloud applications all have redundancy built into their deployment architecture.

So while you’ll hear many pundits say cloud computing isn’t secure, they’re off the mark. For many companies and for many services, both information security and business security is improved when moved to the cloud.

Internet users are not patient people. In fact, if it takes more than two to three seconds to load a web page, they’re likely to bounce out. Bounce rate is one of the greatest indicators of a site’s success or failure.

Why you may ask? Well, it shows a couple of things: Either your audience isn’t embracing your content, or your site is loading too slowly. A high bounce rate also affects your Page Rank. Google has indicated that slow page loading will decrease your Page Rank and your overall search engine results.

Double the Case for Mobile Devices

Mobile search has recently taken center stage in the SERP world. In fact, one of Google’s latest algorithm updates includes improving mobile search results. Mobile is also affecting websites in general. Mobile devices users have a major problem with websites that load slowly mainly because mobile devices don’t have the battery life of a laptop or desktop. The longer it takes a website to load, the more battery life it’s sapping from the device.

Another issue is WiFi. For example, if your website has a lot of slow-loading images, that’s already a problem for a standard computer/laptop. On a mobile device strictly relying on 3-4G technology or WiFi, you’re talking about a site that’s going to take forever to come up, especially over a slow WiFi network.

How Cloud Computing Can Help

On-premises servers are one of the major reasons why websites load slowly. High traffic volume can clog on-premises servers or even crash them, causing major downtime. A website hosted via cloud computing can handle a higher volume of traffic because cloud solutions are scalable. Your website is also hosted on more than one server so if one server goes down, other servers will take on the traffic.

It also easier to manage your website from a single console, and you can scale your hosting storage based on your needs.

Interested in seeing the real benefits of web hosting? You can try all savvisdirect SaaS products free for the first month. Learn more now.

Recent studies have shown that the percentage of companies using SaaS applications has significantly risen. In fact, a recent survey by Constellation Research shows that 37 percent of survey respondents indicated that they are currently using email and calendaring SaaS apps.

According Constellation Research, the reason for this has to do with IT decision-makers’ experiences with personal online email and calendaring services. These decision-makers are just more comfortable with these apps and have seen individual benefits from using them via the cloud.

Overall, SaaS usage rose from 2011 to 2012 from 47 percent of organizations to 49 percent. But not all companies are sold on using SaaS.

Why the Lingering Hesitation

The Constellation Research survey points out that the major reasons why IT decision-makers are not completely turning to SaaS still has to do with their fears of data privacy and security risks. IT decision-makers also fear loss of control.

Many organizations have highly sensitive data that most IT professionals still keep behind firewalls within on-premises hardware. This way, they know the data is relatively secure since it’s located in-house. When it’s stored in an off-site data center, they no longer have immediate access to the security systems of the Cloud Service Provider (CSP). (savvisdirect offers a Management Console that allows you to easily access and manage your data at any time.) Instead, IT decision-makers just have to believe the terms of the SLAs.

Thomas Trappler is a cloud consultant, specializing in cloud computing security. He’s one of those people that everybody listens to when he speaks. He believes that you should use cloud computing, but he has some good advice to protect yourself from security and data privacy breaches.

Think about the encryption methods being used by the CSP. Compare the methods of various CSPs, and go with the best.

Go with a company that has a good reputation in the field. Nowadays, you can research nearly all companies online and learn what other users think of their service and reliability. Find a company that you can trust with your data.

Trappler expects cloud computing to become as standard as your utility services, but he does recommend that you do your research up-front.

Who Owns Your Data

Another thing you should consider is who owns your data. New rulings have indicated that consumers may not own their data once they store it on a cloud computing platform. For example, a New York City judge issued a ruling in 2012 that indicated that a person doesn’t own their Tweets; Twitter does. This would open up your data to be used by the company or turned over to law enforcement. A good CSP would make the stance that businesses own their data, not the CSP. You’re basically just renting space from them like you would rent a storage unit from Self Storage or Public Storage. You are simply storing your belongings, but you still own them. A CSP should offer the same protections. (savvisdirect makes the stance that your data is just that: your data. You own it and control it.)

Are you one of the many companies currently using SaaS applications? If not, what is holding you back?

Since the rise of file sharing services like YouSendIt and Dropbox, employees have been using these services to share files with each other or someone working remotely. It’s easier to upload a large file to a file-sharing service than it is to try and send the file by email. For one, it may take forever to send, and then there’s the chance that the receiving email account may reject it if it’s too large.

File sharing apps eliminate a lot of problems, but they can also create headaches for IT departments. Organizations often don’t have one, designated file sharing app. Instead, employees use whatever with which they are comfortable. This means that IT professionals have no idea when or what files are being shared, meaning that there’s no tracking or auditing capability.

Embracing the Trend

Instead of putting down a mandate that employees can’t use these file-sharing services, organizations should set up and designate one cloud file-sharing service. Here are five reasons why:

1. Fully vetted service: If you decide to go with a company-wide file-sharing service, you can have your IT department find the best one for your organization that provides the right type of privacy, security and encryption methods.

2. Your employees – including your managers – are already using these services: A recent survey by SafeNet Labs showed that over 30 percent of C-level executives are using these services despite company policies against using them. Get ahead of the trend before a security breach happens.

3. Insights into what employees are sharing: As previously mentioned, IT professionals can’t track what’s being shared if employees are using their private accounts. Designating a single cloud file sharing service will eliminate this problem.

4. Improved collaboration: If all employees are using the same service, it’s much easier to share files amongst groups. You’ll eliminate file accessing issues because one employee is using a service that no one else is.

In the past, IT departments were in control of all decisions related to hardware and software. Employees had to run software requests by their IT administrator, and the administrator would decide if they wanted to make the investment.

Times have definitely changed – and not to the benefit of IT departments. With the advent of cloud computing, business end-users are making their own decisions about what SaaS apps they want to use, and they’re often paying for the apps out of their own department’s budget and out of view of IT. Further, CIOs and IT departments have no idea what or even how many cloud apps these end-users are utilizing.

Skyhigh Networks, a firm that monitors business’ use of cloud services, surveyed its business customers and released a rather eye-opening report. According to the report, its customers use on average 545 cloud services. Most of the CIOs of these large enterprise companies, however, believe that their employees use between 40 and 50 apps. This indicates a serious loss of control, but a growing trend offers IT departments a way to get ahead of the cloud apps game: IT-as-a-Service (ITaaS).

What is ITaaS

Definitions may vary across the market, but ITaaS generally refers to the IT department acting as a service provider, where the IT department coordinates internal and external IT services. In terms of cloud computing, the IT department puts together a catalog of SaaS, PaaS, and IaaS services that have been vetted by IT staff members.

From this catalog, business end-users can select a cloud service, and these services often come out of the business department budget.

ITaaS Challenges

While ITaaS seems like the most logical next step for organizations that have embraced Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) and IT Service Management (ITSM) policies and processes, ITaaS isn’t as easy to implement. A recent article by Scott Bils, ”What Makes ITaaS Transformational”, he points out what makes ITaaS so different from existing services.

For example, the biggest issue that IT professionals run into when switching to an ITaaS model is that they now have to deal with “customers” as in the business end-users. These users have been circumnavigating the IT department for a long time and buying their own SaaS applications or other cloud computing services.

When you change the traditional IT model to a service provider model, you run into a problem that sales and marketing people have been dealing with for years: Customers have needs and demands, and oftentimes those needs and demands are not obvious. You have to know your customer well enough to meet their differing requirements. You also have to make sure that your customer understands what they’re buying, which often means describing services in very simplified terms.

Customers will also comparison shop. Perhaps you may endorse a product from one CSP because of trust and reliability, but their prices are slightly higher than a competitor. A business end-user may balk at having to pay more for a service that he can get cheaper somewhere else. IT professionals will have to learn how to effectively communicate with their customers the importance of their catalog selections.

ITaaS is still evolving, but it offers IT departments the best way to stay in control of their traditional arena and ensure that their organizations are getting the most reliable and secure products and services.

Rachio: Smart Landscapes took home the grand prize at “Glorious Failure: In Search of Success Innovation Challenge”, a statewide competition led by the Colorado Innovation Network (COIN) and Governor John Hickenlooper. The goal of this program was to encourage startups and entrepreneurs to engage in conscientious risk-taking and be more creative. Winners were announced on August 29, 2013.

Rachio received $50,000 cash prize and Savvis cloud-computing services. Rachio, a technology startup, helps homeowners create stunning and resource-optimized landscapes. Rachio won the online vote, which helped the company advance to the final round of the competition.

“As a global leader in innovation, CenturyLink supports the entrepreneurial spirit and creativity demonstrated throughout the ‘Glorious Failure’ competition,” said Beal. “Rachio proves that the cloud can change even life’s most basic challenges. On behalf of innovators everywhere, I would like to congratulate the leaders at Rachio for their creativity and strategic risk-taking in launching their startup.”

The “Glorious Failure” judging panel included Matt Beal of CenturyLink, Mitra Best of PwC, and Seth Levine of Foundry Group. Two other Colorado startups, Lightning Hybrids and Double Heli, finished in second and third place respectively. Both businesses will receive Savvis cloud-computing packages and cash prizes.

Savvis, a CenturyLink company, provides industry-leading IT infrastructure solutions to keep enterprises for business in today’s ever-changing global marketplace.

1,115 IT Pros Follow savvisdirect

Similar Vendors

About savvisdirect

savvisdirect, a new suite of cloud products by CenturyLink, includes cloud applications, cloud servers, cloud storage and AppGrid private cloud platform. savvisdirect leverages the global infrastructure of our parent company CenturyLink, the third largest telecommunications company in the U.S., as well as the best practices of our partner company Savvis, a worldwide leader in cloud infrastructure and hosted IT solutions for large enterprises. Whether you're an on-the-go business user, IT administrator or a savvy developer, savvisdirect makes the cloud simple and easy to use. Follow us on Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and YouTube today.